


pass the torch

by carvargeeoh



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Desolation Avatar Tim Stoker, Gen, Horror, The Desolation (The Magnus Archives) - Freeform, Whump, graphic description of body burning alive, its whumpy horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:33:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24012889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carvargeeoh/pseuds/carvargeeoh
Summary: Tim gets claimed by the desolation
Comments: 8
Kudos: 54





	pass the torch

**Author's Note:**

> evil is a relay sport when the one whos burned turns to pass the torch!!!! title is from this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI1KfJTrixQ
> 
> hope you enjoy, wrote it in a couple hours. no beta because NO ONE HAS TIME FOR THAT!!!

Tim’s skin spits off of his body and his muscles blister and char to his bones. He can smell his fat cooking and if he could, he would salivate. But he can't - he chewed and swallowed his tongue the second it was tender enough to tear off the bottom of his jaw. The bomb had blown his arm off, and the subsequent impact twirled his insides away like cigarette ash, but he knew, in some way or another, that this was ascension. Tim had never dismissed the existence of these things, but he would have never called one a God until now. 

Inside the institute; white windowless walls and creaking office supplies, the concrete floors with a thin layer of 40 year old carpet stiffly matted to it, unfriendly lighting and the stuffy smell of printing paper and office spaces filled to the brim with clanging filing cabinets. He was a thing to be monitored in a cage with no bars or locks. What was, was a potted plant next to a push open glass entry way that he rarely stayed late enough to lock himself out of. There was nothing to do but seethe in padded, swivel chairs, and nothing to plan out but his own demise. He couldn't imagine in there that the rage could be anything more than a miserable blue thing. And now, that little fire stoked and fucking blue balled, currently screams from him via physical agony. It's melted his visage. 

Noise is running all around the building. twangs and twinkles turning into shrieks and moans, contorted limbs fruitlessly flail in melted slop. This ecstasy firing through his nervous system is like a firework show. He's clenching his fists and his toes curl in what's left of his sneakers. It's the most pain Tim has ever been in, and he'd be drooling for it if he could.

Jon is yelling "Tim". " Tim" he says again, "that's enough" which is a joke, a fucking joke right? He laughs over it. “Tim, Tim listen!”

She said ‘that's not funny’, that stupid bitch. The blood he coughs sizzles off of what's no longer left of his lips. _It was worth it, it was worth it_ , to see this smoldering mess. Every opportunity it had and every life it took, worthless, and every bit of it reduced to smoldering rubble. The destruction thrills through his body with renewed repetitive energy, thoughts repeating and sentiments rehashing. It feels good, it feels good, it feels good-like he's convincing himself.

Jon's coughing wetly, and Tim abruptly remembers a kayaking trip in America. The Snake River in Idaho. 

His group had hiked a couple miles into the forests north. At the beginning it was all tall, green softwood pines and willowy aspens with vibrant leaves. Sweet smelling brown forest growth cooking in the sun, turning into healthy sagebrush and high mountain desert. Eventually, though, creeped in remains. The bark on barren trees puffed up crisply and cracked apart, the pines that survived orange and dead, branches spiked out like weapons against a dry, summer blue sky.

The locals in the group had assured them that it was healthy and necessary. Idaho soil and air seemed to be created by God to flame up when the summer heat and aridness got to be too much. They’d point out the yellow and blue wild flowers peeking through the black soil, and grass that had somehow survived when the tops of the trees sharpened into black spikes. When they walked further up the trails, the ground was carpeted with bright grasses and the trees were grey and scorched, fallen down like massive old animal bones picked clean, branches scraggly and artistic looking.

The joy of kayaking is that he’s working his entire body to avoid fucking up and losing control. If it were on dry land he’d be covered in sweat, overheating, and constantly having to manage painful delirium to pay attention to the sport at hand. But in the raft, the spray and splash of water is like an ice cold balm that keeps him focused. It chills him to the bone and urges him to believe, and sometimes know, that he can either keep his head in the game or he can get an injury.

He doesn’t know this God, but he knows what the Eye is deciding to tell him now - one last and only grace despite his stubborn heresy. Where wildflowers bloom from burnt soil is not where the lightless flame lives, and where it scorches uncontrolled is not tamed when ridden. Rivers dry miserably under it’s assault. With this memory, and this realization, Tim realizes he’s on fire.

Self preservation panics him and he flails from where he otherwise had been standing still. as if thousands of pustules replaced his pores and popped, his blackened limbs and tender pink lacerations begin to ooze out a liquid. It drips down his arm, oily and waxy, and spreads all over his body. He feels it cascade down his back and push out from behind his eyes, crying down his cheeks, filling the inside his mouth and making up his tongue again. It begins to drip like tree sap from the empty socket of his right arm. It just keeps getting hotter, and his lungs crackle and spasm uselessly in his chest.

“Tim-” the caking substance slides insecure against his body as he turns around. Jon looks like shit; his wounds pulsate with healing abilities and his face is sooty and bloody “The Desolation...”

When Danny died all Tim could do was stand frozen, and all he did to react was stay cold. He hissed out gas, emptied out what was left to excel in him, and tried not to simmer. Something like blue flames licking and kissing the inside of his skull say something like, this was inevitable. All he had to do was get on his knees, light a match, and he’d truly become the hopeless thing that he’d been for years.

Jon is barely sitting up and mouthing words when he collapses back onto the ashy ground that he'd been trying to push himself up from. A bloody halo quickly pools around his head.

Tim knows his insides have been ashed into nothing, because they'd been preparing to be for months. because he looks, and he walks away. he turns his back on his boss and stumbles through the wreckage in horrible, hot pain. He grits his teeth - notices they’re still teeth, and yells loudly, over the crashing ceiling and approaching sirens. Waxy skin slips off and easily oozes back when he pushes open a singed back door, out into early night air that offers no relief.

he dizzily makes his way into a back alleyway. his tattered clothing and skin stick together, cooling, and overheating, and repeat. tim whimpers and shouts low and deep in his throat, breath scalding hot, melting his lips and nose. The wounds under it all hurt - the skin acts as no salve, and when he swallows what he expects to be saliva drooling from his mouth, its burning and oily. Everything is terrible, painful, burning, hot, hot, _hot._ He knows what's happening, he's resisting it and he's scared. He’s _fucking scared._ It’s overwhelming to try and die and in return be reborn.

Tim drops to his knees, presses his face against a brick building seeking cool solace where he’ll find none, and against his better judgement, starts praying to God. 

**Author's Note:**

> kissies to the kudo givers


End file.
